building a new PC

[theyosh]

Well it's been about 5 years since I build my pc and I think it's time for a upgrade. I have been doing some research and when i try to find answers to my questions it just seems like I find more questions to my answers than actual real answers..lol. Being out of the game for 5 years really hurts! Well for starters I want to build my system around a Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I've also decided to stick with either a Asus or Intel mobo. After that things are really up in the air. My budget is about $1200 and I can go over just a tiny bit if i have to. I don't need a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Everything else I do need. Here's my broken list so far:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo - I want a cpu that is in it's sweet spot, definitely want to stay away from the extreme models

Mobo: Asus or Intel is fine with me, I just want a well rounded mobo... maybe a little towards the performance side.

video card: I know this is the heart and soul of a gaming rig and would like to try one of them 8800GTX's, but i'm not sure if they're worth the pretty penny.

Sound card: do i need one? I have one in my current system but i am no longer familiar with the performance of the onboard sound cards.

Memory: I guess my cpu and mobo will dictate this.

HDD: I want something fast, I was thinking about the WD raptor 150GB model. Is there a more cost effective way of achieving this? As far as storage I already have a 500GB and 320GB SATA drives i can use.

Optical Drives: What has been the popular option lately? I was thinking having a DVD burner and a regular DVD drive. So basically 2 optical drives.

Case: I'm looking at Lian Li cases but i'm wide open to other suggestions. I just want something that is clean and user friendly. Don't want any fancy lights that will keep me distracted...lol. Having a plexi-glass window isn't a big issue either, in fact i'm leaning towards not having one. My budget for the case is about $200, again i can spend a tiny bit more if it's worth it.

As far as use goes I am pretty much a gamer.

PC Mech is a great place to get tips from all sorts of different people and that's what i like about this place. Some of the old school members are conservative and some of the new kids here are on the edge and i like hearing from everyone to get a good picture of what i want to do. Thanks for any of your reponses!!

theyosh

[Katreat]

Case: Personal choice
MB: Asus P5K
Processor: E8400
Ram: Corsair 2x1gb DDR2-800
HD: Seagate 7200.11 500gb Sata
DVD: Lite-On DVD Burner Sata Retail
Video: EVGA 8800gt 512
PSU: Corsair 550
OS: Vista 32 Home Premium or XP

that is a good basic gaming build without going extream.

The P5K is a very stable board and if you need WIFI you can get the P5K-E for a few dollars more. the E8400 has tanken over the sweet spot for CPUs and few games really benefit from quad cores at this time. The MB will support the new 45 mm quads if an upgrade becomes necessary down the road. I just like corsair ram, but 2 GB of any good brand will work. The new 16 and 32 mb cache 7200 drives are just a little slower han the raptors and much more value for the dollars so I would recommend sticking with those. The raptors are really for extream gamers and you would do better putting the cash into a better video card. Lite-on is just a very good brend and if you buy retail they give you Nero for about $3 more than OEM.

the new 8800 GT performs almost as well as the GTX for a lot less money. If you want even better performance look to the new GTS. make sure both have the new G92 GPU and are labeled 512 mb. The 8800 GTX is still top dog, but you pay a huge preimum for very little performance increase these days.

Hope that helps.

Kat

[Masaki 7-11]

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 is the sweet spot for fast processors at the moment, the recommended motherboard would be P5K model from Asus, or a devrivative of it (P5K seems to have the most performance features and a lower cost than other models).

The 8800GTX is quite old now, so a less expensive card like the 8800GTS 512MB comes very close to it in performance. Regarding a fast hard drive, generally the Raptors don't provide much if any performance increase over a normal hard drive (probably because of platter density being higher on normal hard drives).

Coolermaster Stacker 830 is a really nice case.

[flanzig1]

Katreat's list does hit the sweet spots and will be under your budget, so you have some playing room to up the CPU or get a P5K with more features. For the sound card, we say try the on-board first.

[amdalex]

The 8800gt or new gts are the new sweet spots for graphics cards. With the GTX you pay too much for too little.

[theyosh]

Thanks for the quick responses. So far this is my list:

CPU: Intel E8400

Video Card: EVGA 8800GT

Case: LoL most likely another Lian Li but i'll choose one myself.. didn't know manufacturers post in the this forum.

Sound card: Will try out the onboard first.

As far as the mobo goes the P5K's sound great but 5 years ago Intel on Intel builds were considered the most stable platform to work from. Is this still true or has Asus boards up the ante in the past few years? I've had a great experience with Intel boards but I am willing to try new things with the Asus board. I am just curious.

I too think Corsair makes great memory, they are one of my favorite RAM manufacturers. But I noticed on the E8400 that the FSB is 1333, will the DDR2-800 be sufficient? And if so what is the formula on figuring out what RAM will work with a given FSB? Now as far as the PSU goes how much wattage would be good for this kind of system. I've noticed there are monsterous PSU's and I'm starting wonder if some of them might be over kill.

For the optical drive is using a SATA interface beneficial? If there is no or very little difference I rather use the PATA interface that's available on the mobo. Thanks for the help guys!

theyosh

[Katreat]

The Asus P5K uses an intel chip set, the P35, so it is still intel on intel. I have always had good luck with Asus boards so they are my board of choice.

Not real sure of the exact formula for calculateing ram speed but basically with a 1333 processor 677 ram would be the direct match. But, they always say to buy ram a step faster so generally 800 is now recommended for 1333 processor. Going with 1066 ram would make no difference because it would step down to the processor speed. It is really only valuable if you plan on OCing the processor.

You could check out a power need at Tomshardware but basically this system would require around 500 watts. Most of that is for the video card which I think recommends 450 or so for it alone. Most people recomend getting a bit of head room just in case you want to upgrade some day which was why I recommeded the 550 watt unit. I used a corsair 620 in my current build but I am sure the Corsair 520 could have handled it but I am figuring on a video card upgrade before I build new again so was playing it safe. Basically shoot for around 550 to give yourself some headroom for upgrade or expansions and you should be fine. If you get a good deal you could go a little bigger but it would not be necessary to run that system.

The really big PSU are mainly being driven by the SLI market. When you start stacking video cards you can really increase the power needs by a ton.

Most newer boards have SATA interfaces, the P5K has 4-5 if I remember right. IDE is on its way out and the IDE controllers on newer boards are thrid party because newer chip sets do not support IDE natively. So it is best to build with SATA and avoid IDE all together if building new. If you a legacy burner or HD it will probably work fine, but since SATA is faster, uses skinny cable, and has no jumpers to set, it is the way to go on new builds.

Kat

[theyosh]

Thanks for your time Katreat. This is indeed very helpful from all the insight you have given me. I'll probably order all the parts next week, thx again for all the info!

theyosh